Breaking Point
by The Scrypt Keyper
Summary: "Never let a stain from the past mark your future." When Danny's physical and mental health start spiraling downward after a mysterious ghost attack, Danny starts to lose his grip on the world. But when an unexpected old enemy shows up to help, and our hero has a falling out with his only friends, he makes a rash decision that surprises...(continued inside) beta'd by truephan


**Hello, all! And welcome back. I'd like to point out that I've already published this story, but have made some very extreme changes. I reread what I had written before, and to put it bluntly, I did not like it at all. So, I went and changed it all up. Heh. Of course, it would not have been possible without my AMAZING beta, truephan! If she wasn't here to help me, I'd be buried in a mess of dangling participles, passive voice sentences, and other mistakes—as would you! So, here is the summary:**

"Never let a stain from the past mark your future." When Danny's physical and mental health start spiraling downward after a mysterious ghost attack, Danny starts to lose his grip on the world. But when an unexpected old enemy shows up to help, and our hero has a falling out with his only friends, he makes a rash decision that surprises everybody. Will Danny be able to fight this "disease" he's developed? Will he regret his decision and make things right? Or will his deteriorating health catch him before he has the chance?

**Well, I hope y'all give this a shot! Enjoy! Oh, and also, does anybody have a name suggestion? I was thinking between Fade, Fade Away, Break Away, or Breaking Point...I just can't decide!**

**Luciano: _Shiavo_, you forgot two very important things!  
**

**Me: *groans* What, Luciano? **

**Luciano: Well, you forgot to introduce me, and you forgot to say that little disclaimer thing you're always whining to me about. I believe you said something about "not owning Danny Phantom, but I should because since he cancelled it, Butch Hartman has no more im****—"**

******Me: Luciano! *covers his mouth* I-I never said that! *glances at readers* Don't mind him. He's just a mean little muse who recently moved in and is now stealing my food and bed. *glares***

******Luciano: *grins* I can't help it. It's in my nature. Now then, if you'll excuse me, before I remembered I had to remind you about that little disclaimer, I was having a very...ah...interesting talk with Ms Hyde.**

******Me: *blinks* Ms Hyde? Truephan's muse? *frowns* ...What would you be talking to her about...?**

**Luciano: Hmm? Oh, nothing important. *smirks* I'll see you later. *vanishes***

******Me: O_O alright, I'm scared. But anyway. I do not own Danny Phantom, or anything else recognizable. Please enjoy!**

* * *

**_The day after graduation..._**

_Danny soared through the bright blue sky, grinning from ear-to__-__ear. He just couldn't get off this high, which was caused by the joy of the fact that he had actually graduated! He hadn't been sure up to now since he had almost failed his freshman year, which, of course, among many things, had been due to his having to hide his secret, and never having time to study. Not only that, but he still had been constantly late for class and had troubles with math throughout the rest of high school. But he had done it!_

_Nothing at all could dampen Danny's mood as he patrolled the skies of Amity Park, searching for signs of a ghost. What possibly could? A ghost hadn't even been sighted for several weeks, so technically this "patrol" was more of a "joy ride."_

_With this thought, Danny grinned and suddenly darted further upwards into the clouds, then zoomed back down through them with several flips and swirls following after. He laughed joyously, closing his eyes as he enjoyed the cool breeze and the warmth of the sun, thanking the world for such a wonderful—_

_Danny stopped mid-flight __when__ suddenly a blue wisp of energy left his mouth. The graduate frowned slightly while he looked around for the ghost that had just momentarily ruined his fun. Hopefully, it was the Box Ghost or some other weak ghost, or perhaps a good ghost._

_The young hybrid huffed. Whatever the case, he still had to find the ghost. But__ then Danny furrowed his eyes and __frowned a bit more__ with his next thought...He was so high up, and his ghost sense was only triggered when a ghost was _very _near him...What would a ghost be doing all the way up _here?

_After searching all around him, Danny found no ghost. This only confused him further. He was also more puzzled when his ghost sense went off again. He knew that meant that the ghost was closer, but he didn't see it anywhere!_

_"Hello?" Danny called, looking around wearily. He scowled. "Just come out! I'd kinda like to get back to enjoying my day!"_

_The teen was met with silence._

_Danny growled slightly, his hands filling up with energy. "Oh, so you wanna play hardball?"_

_Another wisp of blue energy escaped his lips, and his eyes darted around as he tried to pinpoint where the ghost was. "I'm gonna give you to a count of three before I just start blasting."_

_The teen paused, and upon hearing nothing, a determined look fell on his face._

_"One..."_

_Nothing._

_"Two..."_

_Silence._

_"Three!"_

_Upon hearing nothing, Danny gritted his teeth before pulling himself into a ball__.__Energy started to gather and sizzle around him in a ghostly green sphere. The energy crackled and popped as it built up until finally, Danny thrust his arms and legs outward and with an audible cry, released all of the energy and sent it in every direction._

_As his energy dissipated, Danny panted and fisted his hands. He looked hadn't he hit the ghost?When __his ghost sense went off again, Danny _knew _that there was a ghost! There had to be! Yet, why hadn't it gotten hit by his energy...? There had to be some explanation—_

_-Ssssssssssss-BAM!_

_Without any warning, a ball of orange energy came hurtling towards him and promptly exploded right in his chest. He screamed in agony at the impact that had sent him careening backwards. When he finally managed to stop, he clutched his chest and groaned. He tried to blink away the white spots that danced before his eyes as he tried to search for his attacker. But before he could do anything or make his head stop spinning, he felt something that felt like a gloved hand grasp his throat. The teen let out a choked cry of surprise even as he instinctively grabbed the hand that was threatening to crush his windpipe. However, a moment later he heard what sounded like another ball of energy sizzling before what felt like a fist pound into his stomach._

_The hybrid cried out in pain __at the same time that__ the hand that had been around his throat released him, and another explosion of energy slammed into his stomach, and sent him falling towards the ground. His eyes fluttered as he tried to stay conscious. All he could tell was that whatever energy that was, it wasn't normal ghost energy. It felt as if once it had made contact with him, it had spread over his body and attacked him with small bolts of electricity. There was little he could do as he fell to the ground while slowly losing his senses._

_But before he could hit the ground,_another _blast of energy hit him, this time from below him,which exploded onto his back and sent him upwards! Danny wasn't sure how much more of this he could take. As soon as he stopped flying upwards, he forced himself to stop and regain his senses, shaking his head to clear his mind.__He quickly filled his hands with sizzling energy and looked around frantically._

_"Show yourself!" Danny exclaimed, still searching. He squinted his eyes, trying desperately to locate where—_

—_There!_

_But Danny didn't want to look as if he had noticed and quickly glanced away after seeing a small shimmer in the atmosphere. And when he scanned his surroundings again, he noticed that that shimmer would disappear and reappear and was barely visible, though it was now closer!_

_Not wanting to risk getting hit by that awful energy again, the hybrid sent two blasts towards where he thought his enemy was._

_A __shout of surprise __sounded__ from the general area where the shimmer was __before he heard__ a cry of pain__._

_After the energy had hit its target, Danny gasped when__ a shower of orange tinted sparks exploded away from the shimmer. Quickly throwing his hands up in the air and putting a shield around him, Danny watched in shock as the orange sparks hit his shield, sizzling and popping and melting through his energy. Whoever—or whatever—this ghost was, it definitely had a few tricks up its proverbial sleeve!_

_Danny grinned as he saw the shimmer become more visible, and he was able to tell that the figure was most likely a'who'. Danny charged forward, energy swirling in his hands. Right as he reached the shimmer, he pulled back his right fist then sent it flying forward. Danny's fist made contact with what he assumed was the figure's stomach, but instead of hearing a scream of pain, Danny heard a small 'oof' before a shout of pain escaped his own mouth!_

_Foreign hot electrical energy connected with and then surged through his own energy. It pushed forward, entered his body and spread through him. Screaming in agony, Danny yanked his arm back. Once it had finally stopped coursing through his veins, Danny cradled his numb, tingling hand. The obvious distraction was enough for the shimmer to lunge forward and tackle the boy._

_The teen yelped in surprise, trying to get his attacker off of him, but his attempts were in vain. Seeing that its prey was trying to escape, the shimmer used its hand that wasn't holding Danny by the collar to produce more orange energy. It continuously pounded the energy into the teen's stomach. Each electrical-__packed punch brought another screech from Danny's throat until the enemy crushed the hero into the ground. The breath was knocked right out of the hybrid, yet the attacker__ stopped its assault._

_Danny groaned as his eyelids fluttered and his head lolled from side-to-side in his attempt to get his sucked in a pained breath and finally opened up his eyes. Though his vision was blurry, he could still just barely make out the shimmer above him._

_"Who..." Danny coughed. "Who are you...?" he wheezed._

_The shimmering figure said nothing, but his right hand suddenly became black glove was holding a syringe filled with black-speckled green ectoplasm. The figure knelt down next to Danny; but when the hybrid immediately tried to pull back,__the shimmer__ produced a shield made __of orange energy__ which shoved him back down and held him._

_Danny cried out in pain as the orange energy once again sent hot electrical energy through him. The boy knew that he was too weak at the moment when he failed to phase through the ground when he tried to get away._

_But then, the figure created a hole in the shield right above where the boy's heart would be, or rather —since the boy was in his ghost form — his core. Now that the newly opened part of the shield was no longer touching him, Danny let out small gasps of pain. Still, the teen didn't dare move unless he would come into contact with that energy again._

_Suddenly, Danny saw that the figure hovering above him was about to plunge that syringe in his chest!_

_"Wait, no! Stop! W-What is th-AGH!" Danny's eyes clenched shut;he screamed even louder once the syringe entered his core and __felt __the ectoplasm that was not his invade his own.__The pain only got worse as the figure continued to empty the syringe of its entire contents, which had been measured to be enough to fill the majority, if not all, of the ghost boy's core._

_Screaming and twisting and writhing in pain, Danny could feel the ectoplasm as it took over his own energy and started spreading through his body. It hurt even worse than what it probably normally would have because the electrical shield still above him shocking him every time he made contact with it._

_After a moment of watching the boy scream, the figure yanked out the syringe, earning an even louder screech from his victim. The enemy took its time as it seemed to pocket the syringe before pulling out another, only this one filled with a dark green energy. This syringe was almost twice as large as the last one, and the figure didn't hesitate to plunge it into Danny's core even more forcefully than the last time._

_Danny screamed louder, his eyes flashing open and glowing a bright neon green,__and the whites of his eyes and his pupils __were __no longer __visible. "STOP! STOP PLEASE! NO!"_

_His pleads were cut short as he thrashed and screamed again louder and longer._

_Upon emptying the second syringe, the figure slowly pulled it out.__After the figure had done this, he looked around to make sure nobody was around. __Whoever this ghost was, it had gotten extremely lucky, for after his fight with the young hybrid they had landed in a part of Amity Park that had either abandoned or empty condemned it was satisfied that nobody was here, the shimmering figure quickly pulled out one last but very small syringe, and slowly inserted it into the hybrid's core. Just as sluggishly, it began extracting a small amount of Danny's energy. __At first, the villain was so caught up in its task that Danny's screams met deaf ears. But as soon as the figure began to slowly pull out the syringe, he finally noticed Danny's gasps of pain. And the entity was sure that wiggling the syringe a little more as he drew it entirely out would inflict even more pain upon the poor hero._

_Sparks of light scattered around where the figure's mouth would be, and a cruel, fanged grin could momentarily be seen as Danny's screams reached an all new level of noise. The ghost knew of the young hybrid's abilities, but was not worried about the hero's "ghostly wail" in the least, as it was obvious that he was too weak to perform such an attack._

_When __the attacker stood, the shield vanished, allowing Danny to twist and thrash freely__. __The boy's __pain was so great that his fingers dug into the concrete. In fact, he was in so much excruciating pain, that he had completely forgotten about his attacker, and was solely focused on making the pain in his core to stop! Danny's back arched, and just as quickly as his screams and thrashing had started, he rolled over onto his stomach and pushed himself up onto his hands and knees__ when __an overwhelming feeling overpowered his churning stomach. In hardly less than a moment, his screams were muted by violent coughing__ as dark green ectoplasm, speckled with his usual bright green ectoplasm, spewed from his throat. Sobs and coughs wracked his body, and he was so distracted that he never noticed how the figure slowly began charging a large ball of orange energy in its still visible hand._

_A deep, cruel, masculine chuckle could be heard from where the shimmering figure was even as the sizzling and crackling of the energy got louder. __And then, without warning, the figure blasted it right into Danny Phantom. The teen hero never even had a chance to scream when it hit him and he crumpled to the ground._

_And the boy knew no more as the figure laughed louder, before it completely disappeared..._

* * *

**_Six weeks after the attack..._**

Maddie frowned as she watched her son scrub the dishes. He had never been one to voluntarily help out with chores, so the fact that he was doing them at all was a surprise in and of itself. But what really concerned her was that he'd been working on this single plate for almost half an hour!

She knew something was wrong with her son, but she couldn't convince him to talk to her. At first, she hadn't noticed. But then the mother had started seeing small changes in her son. Like how if one of the pillows on the couch was out of place, he'd straighten it. Or when she'd bring in some of his laundry, he'd refold _everything _as if she hadn't done it well enough. And then there was the fact that even if he _knew _it was just a stain, he would spend _forever _scrubbing a single dish to try and get it clean. One day, if fact, he had gotten so obsessive about a certain stain, he had attempted to blast it off with his energy, only to have the plate shatter and send glass everywhere! He had spent hours trying to find any micro-pieces of glass the broom and then mop might have missed.

About five and a half weeks ago, Danny had gotten very ill. He had suffered agonizing migraines, sore throats, and vomiting—the last one had scared the two eldest Fentons the most because the young hybrid had been vomiting _ectoplasm_. During the time that he was sick, which was about eight days, his core temperature had constantly switched from temperatures much higher than he could handle to even colder temperatures he also could not only that, but his powers had continuously gave him troubles.

But after his "cold," Danny began acting...off. It was very strange. He would constantly straighten things, put items in a certain order, and do other obsessive things. At first, nobody really noticed it. But it had gotten worse over the weeks, and everybody could now tell something was wrong with him.

Maddie frowned a little more as she watched her son grit his teeth in irritation when he couldn't get the spot to come off the plate. With a sigh, she stood up and placed a hand on his shoulder.

Danny almost dropped the plate when he jumped in surprise and turned around to see who was there.

This also troubled the mother. Danny had also become very paranoid and jumpy since he had gotten ill.

"Danny, we need to talk," Maddie said softly as she took the plate and rag out of his hands and placed them in the sink.

The eighteen-year-old glanced at the sink full of _dirty dishes_, finding it hard to tell himself to leave them there for a moment. "But the dishes..."

"Can wait a moment," Maddie interrupted before she gestured for him to sit down at the table.

The teen sighed and did as he was told before the mother sat across from him.

Danny hesitated, then slowly asked, "What do we need to talk about? Is it about college? 'Cause I'm still waiting on the letter from the community—"

"Danny. Stop. You know what this is about. And you need to stop avoiding the topic," Maddie said with a frown. Her eyes then saddened as she grabbed one of his hands. "Sweetheart...What's _wrong_?"

The teen fidgeted in his seat, biting his lip and looking down at the table as he nervously tapped his foot. "Nothing's wrong."

"Yes there is! Danny, please, let me—us—help you! You've been acting strange ever since you got sick and—"

"Mom!" Danny exclaimed, successfully silencing his mother. As soon as she quieted down, he frowned at her as he got up, saying more calmly, "I'm fine, okay? Nothing is wrong."

As Danny walked back over to the sink, Maddie sighed. "I'm so sorry you can't talk to me, Danny," she whispered sadly.

Danny remained silent as he heard his mom exit the room.

The room was silent for a moment more before the teen gripped the edge of the sink tightly and stared into the murky water.

_That water is disgusting. You need to change it. The dishes will never get clean in that! _the hybrid's mind whispered to him, and his eye twitched in irritation as he dipped his hand into water and pulled the plug.

Though he sounded so sure on the outside, Danny was a mess on the inside. He realized this as he got to the sink and his mother's words sank in.

Danny _knew _something was wrong. He had been having the strangest urges lately, and the strangest feelings as well. Some of those feelings being that...he couldn't trust his loved ones. He recalled a ghost fight about two weeks ago in which he refused to let Sam carry a gun on her for fear of her shooting him instead of the evil ghost. He wouldn't let Tucker carry a thermos, either, because he was afraid his friend would decide to trap him in it instead of the ghost.

He found himself needing everything to be absolutely clean and proper and in the right place. He had once spent an entire day straightening up his already sparkling clean room. He fixed stupid, unneeded things. Like the couch cushions. Or making sure his mother's knick-knacks were in an absolutely straight line. Even if one of them was moved a micro-millimeter, it drove Danny almost to the point of insanity if he didn't fix it right away.

Most of the time, the hybrid didn't notice that he actually did these things. But occasionally he did. And it worried him because he couldn't make himself stop. The impulses were just so strong!

Besides his obviously deteriorating mental health, Danny was also worried about his physical health. Knowing his friends and family were already worried about him, he never mentioned how his powers had been giving him trouble lately.

Not only had his energy been spiking either way too hot or way too cold, but his core had been...constricting a lot. A core constriction could mean many things: from being similar to a heart skipping a beat in fear,to the equivalence of having a heart attack. And Danny was pretty sure most of them were closer to the latter. Also, whenever he used his energy, it _hurt. _Badly. Especially when his energy spiked higher and became too fact, it was slowly becoming the norm for him. He even had slight burns on his hands to prove it—though he refused to show his parents. And lastly, there was that thing with his uncontrollable invisibility, intangibility, random ectoblasts, false alarm ghost sensing, and uncontrollable transformations...

Danny stared at his reflection in the draining water, and couldn't help but think how the murkiness of the liquid that made the reflection look unpleasant was exactly how he felt. He felt gray, sad, and...and...everything.

_You're fine! _His mind whispered to him, and Danny shook his head.

No he wasn't! He knew something was wrong! Deep, deep down. But...why was his mind telling him he was fine? His friends and family could obviously tell something was wrong with him. But he continued to deny it!

_Do not listen to them, _his mind hissed. _You know your body and mind better than them. This is the real you. It just took a while for it to shine through._

_But...But it doesn't feel...right..._Danny argued back in his head.

_Because you are so influenced by your 'loved ones.' You need not listen to them. Only listen to me..._His mind said soothingly.

Danny shook the voice in the back of his mind away, forcing himself to concentrate. He would worry about what was going on later.

The teen's face wrinkled in disgust as he stared at the dirty dishes, and when the dirty water was completely drained, he began refilling the sink with fresher water. Yes, he would worry about it later. _Right now, though, I really need to clean these dishes, _he thought to himself.

He paused as he picked up the stained plate that would never come clean, and once more told himself, _I'll worry about it later. As soon as these dishes are clean..._

* * *

**Oh, you're down here already? Well then! How did you like it? I would love it if you'd tell me in a review. And just so you know, flames will only keep me nice and toasty warm—and it will be so much easier to eat my s'mores with something to roast them over! But, if you'll excuse me, I need to go make sure Luciano isn't planning world domination by means of his "special" pasta. *sighs* Please review!**

**Forever and Always, Nikki**


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